I do not need a £100 hairbrush. So why have I spent so long fantasising about one?

I think it’s my way of avoiding my feelings – and that whatever they are, I’d be better off facing up to them

I recently found myself fantasising about buying a hairbrush that costs more than £100. It is a very beautiful hairbrush: it comes in a choice of seductive colours and it is fashioned from the keratin-rich fibres of south-east Asian boar and from biodegradable cellulose acetate (entirely free of petrochemicals). It was advertised to me on social media and I later sought it out, Googling it again and again, admiring photos of it from different angles and imagining the reassuring weight of its handle in my hand. If ever there were a hairbrush that could help me build a better life, I thought, this surely would be it.

How disturbingly close I came to buying this hairbrush I really cannot say. However, I can tell you when I knew that it was never going to happen. It was just now, when I realised with shock, after months of Googling and ogling, that I don’t use a hairbrush. I haven’t used one in close to 25 years – not since I was old enough to understand that my hair is curly and terrible frizzy things happen when I brush it. I use a wide-toothed comb once a day in the shower.